What Are Aesthetic Emotions?

Transcription

1 Running head: AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 1 What Are Aesthetic Emotions? Winfried Menninghaus 1, Valentin Wagner 1, Eugen Wassiliwizky 1, Ines Schindler 1, Julian Hanich 2, Thomas Jacobsen 3, Stefan Koelsch 4 1) Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 2) University of Groningen, The Netherlands 3) Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Germany 4) University of Bergen, Norway 2018, American Psychological Association. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the final, authoritative version of the article. Please do not copy or cite without authors' permission. The final article will be available, upon publication, via its DOI: /rev Author Note Winfried Menninghaus, Ines Schindler, Valentin Wagner, and Eugen Wassiliwizky, Department of Language and Literature, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Grüneburgweg 14, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Julian Hanich, Department of Arts,

2 Running head: AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 2 Culture and Media, University of Groningen, Oude Boteringestraat 23, 9712 EK Groningen, The Netherlands; Thomas Jacobsen, Experimental Psychology Unit, Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Holstenhofweg 85, Hamburg, Germany; Stefan Koelsch, University of Bergen, Jonas Lies vei 91, Postboks 7807, 5020 Bergen, Norway We wish to thank John T. Cacioppo, Philipp Ekardt, Arthur M. Jacobs, Christine A. Knoop, Klaus R. Scherer, Mira Shah, and Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Winfried Menninghaus, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Grüneburgweg 14, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. w.m@ae.mpg.de.

3 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 3 Abstract This is the first comprehensive theoretical article on aesthetic emotions. Following Kant s definition, we propose that it is the first and foremost characteristic of aesthetic emotions to make a direct contribution to aesthetic evaluation/appreciation. Each aesthetic emotion is tuned to a special type of perceived aesthetic appeal and is predictive of the subjectively felt pleasure or displeasure and the liking or disliking associated with this type of appeal. Contrary to the negativity bias of classical emotion catalogues, emotion terms used for aesthetic evaluation purposes include far more positive than negative emotions. At the same time, many overall positive aesthetic emotions encompass negative or mixed emotional ingredients. Appraisals of intrinsic pleasantness, familiarity, and novelty are preeminently important for aesthetic emotions. Appraisals of goal relevance/conduciveness and coping potential are largely irrelevant from a pragmatic perspective, but in some cases highly relevant for cognitive and affective coping. Aesthetic emotions are typically sought and savored for their own sake, with subjectively felt intensity and/or emotional arousal being rewards in their own right. The expression component of aesthetic emotions includes laughter, tears, and facial and bodily movements, along with applause or booing and words of praise or blame. Aesthetic emotions entail motivational approach and avoidance tendencies, specifically, tendencies toward prolonged, repeated, or interrupted exposure and wanting to possess aesthetically pleasing objects. They are experienced across a broad range of experiential domains and not coextensive with art-elicited emotions. moved Keywords: aesthetic emotions; aesthetic evaluation/appreciation; liking; beauty; being

4 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 4 What Are Aesthetic Emotions? Ever since the Greek and Latin treatises on poetics (for a compendium, see Quintilian, 1920), it has been widely assumed that emotions play a crucial role in the processing of artworks, and specifically, in the enjoyment associated with them. Accordingly, recent models of processing visual artworks (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2014; Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004; Pelowski, Markey, Forster, Gerger, & Leder, 2017), literature (A. M. Jacobs, 2015), and music (Brattico, Bogert, & Jacobsen, 2013; Juslin, 2013) all include a component called aesthetic emotions. At the same time, none of these models provide a detailed definition or discussion of what aesthetic emotions actually are. The same holds by and large for the studies of individual aesthetic emotions to which we refer throughout this article. The present article is the first to offer an in-depth theoretical discussion of the distinctive nature of aesthetic emotions. We propose that aesthetic emotions are primarily defined by four mandatory features that are largely in accord with Kant s foundational introduction of the concept (1790/2001, pp ): 1. Aesthetic emotions are full-blown discrete emotions that, for all their differences in affective nature, relevant appraisals, and other emotion components, always include an aesthetic evaluation/appreciation of the objects or events under consideration. For example, feelings of suspense experienced in literary or filmic narratives are aesthetic emotions, if they not only refer to varying degrees of uncertainty experienced in a sequence of events (=ordinary meaning), but contribute, by virtue of being suspenseful, to appreciating the elicitors as well-made and powerfully engaging narratives (=aesthetic emotion meaning). 2. Each aesthetic emotion is differentially tuned to, and predictive of, a specific type of aesthetic virtue (for the classical theory of aesthetic virtues and vices, see Quintilian, 1920), or, defined in

5 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 5 subjective terms, a specific type of aesthetic appeal (for the notion of appeal, see Knobloch- Westerwick & Keplinger, 2006; Muth, Hesslinger, & Carbon, 2015; Oliver & Sanders, 2004). These are reflected in the attributes differentially assigned to the eliciting objects or events. The majority of these attributes are derivatives of the respective emotion category, such as moving, fascinating, surprising, shocking, suspenseful, etc. 3. As a function of their bearing on subjective aesthetic appreciation, aesthetic emotions are associated with subjectively felt pleasure or displeasure during the emotional episode. 4. For the same reason, aesthetic emotions are an important (though certainly not the only) predictor of resultant liking or disliking. After Kant, the construct of aesthetic emotions went largely untreated for some two hundred years. Neither Fechner (1876) nor Berlyne (1971) included it in their foundational work on empirical aesthetics. It is only in the past two decades that the frequency of the term aesthetic emotions in science journals has surged from 11 in over 73 in to 194 in A closer look at Berlyne s Aesthetics and Psychobiology (1971) reveals reasons both for the long absence and the renewed interest in aesthetic emotions. Berlyne (1971) starts his chapter on Emotion and Arousal in aesthetic perception and evaluation with a brief and very selective review of earlier theorizing. A quote from the influential 18 th century author Dubos opens the panorama; it highlights a topical blend of emotional affection and aesthetic appreciation that we will later treat as a key example of an aesthetic emotion: The first aim at painting is to move us. A work which moves us greatly must be excellent on the whole 1 We submitted a query on scopus.com with the default settings, searching for TITLE-ABS-KEY ( *esthetic emotion* OR *esthetic feeling* ).

6 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 6 (Berlyne, 1971, p. 61; for Dubos original sentence which includes poetry, too, see Dubos, 1719, p. 305). Additional brief remarks bring up Herder, Wordsworth, Stravinsky, and the art critic Clive Bell. The latter, Berlyne notes, has recognized something called aesthetic emotion as the proper intermediary through which art does its work (Berlyne, 1971, p.61). For Bell, aesthetic emotions are about evaluating visual artworks regarding the artistic rightness and necessity of their lines and colors, and, in accord with Dubos, the potentially resulting aesthetically moving forms (Bell, 1947, p. 8 & 26). In Berlyne s subsequent own treatment of Emotion and Arousal in aesthetic perception and evaluation, the authors and topics of his one-page literature survey do not play a role anymore. Berlyne exclusively focuses on general psychological mechanisms of emotional activation, arousal, intensity, hedonic value and motivation in aesthetic evaluation, and he systematically disregards the role specific discrete emotions might play in this context. In contrast, the renewed interest in aesthetic emotions over the past two decades is associated with a focus on individual discrete emotions. Moreover, many of the relevant authors are informed by appraisal theories of emotions (Arnold, 1960; Lazarus, Averill, & Opton, 1970; Scherer, 1984) which became more influential only after Berlyne s seminal works (see also Silvia, 2005a). (Notably, Berlyne does not consider interest which he does extensively treat as an emotion; the latter understanding was proposed only in more recent years (Izard, 1992; Silvia, 2005b).) Like the more recent models of art-reception quoted above, the present article endorses the assumption that aesthetic emotions are a special class of discrete emotions that can explain additional variance of the process of aesthetic perception and evaluation which Berlyne left unaccounted for. We analyze the conceptual underpinnings and the theoretical implications of the construct of aesthetic emotions, propose ways of operationalizing such emotions, and,

7 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 7 based on existing empirical evidence, emphasize their value for a more comprehensive understanding of aesthetic evaluation. In this process, we adopt many of the other predictors of aesthetic evaluation that Berlyne actually did treat. In addition to the four mandatory features identified above, we propose a greater variety of prototypical features in the sense defined by Fehr and Russell (1984). Even though none of these prototypical features alone allow to determine whether a given emotional episode is an aesthetic emotion, they further delineate the overall range and nature of aesthetic emotions and hence make important contributions to a detailed and multicomponent characterization. At the conclusion of this article, 19 bullet points summarize the mandatory and prototypical features in the order of their treatment. As we spell out our model, we project all hypothetical characteristics of aesthetic emotions onto the framework of multicomponent models of emotions (cf. Frijda, 1986; Scherer, 2005). The resultant model is depicted in Figure 1.

8 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 8 Figure 1. The multicomponent model of aesthetic emotions. Note that only the boxes highlighted in yellow and light blue are more extensively treated in the main part of this article. The other boxes reflect additional desiderata that are briefly discussed in the section Limitations and Directions for Future Research. Aisthesis, Aesthetics, Aesthetic Emotions, Aesthetic Evaluation, Aesthetic Stance In order to understand what is at stake in the concept of aesthetic emotions, it is helpful to reconsider what is at stake in aesthetics as a whole. The concept of aesthetic emotions was

9 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 9 introduced against the background of the distinction between theoretical, practical (moral), and aesthetic cognition, which first motivated philosophers from Baumgarten through Kant to establish aesthetics as a third and separate discipline in addition to theoretical and practical philosophy. For Kant as well as for the modern sciences, theoretical cognition strives for valid judgments of truth (correctness) by means of strictly concept-guided lines of argument and interpretations of available empirical evidence. In this process, theoretical cognition abstracts from the particulars of individual phenomena. In contrast, aesthetic judgments are in the end regardless of the regularities they also imply about individual objects, and they try to do justice to subtle nuances in appearance rather than abstract from these individualizing nuances (Baumgarten, 1735/1954, 1750/2007; Kant, 1790/2001); they are hence based on the full richness of the perceptual input. For this reason, Baumgarten took recourse to the Greek word for sensory perception in general, namely, aisthesis, as he proposed a new field of philosophy under the name of aesthetics. At the same time, aesthetics in this modern sense entails a special judgmental focus on aspects of the objects under consideration that are subjectively perceived as pleasing to our senses and/or our cognitive capacities. The Greek word aisthesis and the broader modern notion of sensory perception entail no such special judgmental focus. As a result, the modern discipline of aesthetics blends sensory perception and an evaluative focus that does not rely on abstraction from the richness (Latin: copia) of the sensory perceptual input. Baumgarten and Kant proposed that the special task demands of aesthetic perception and evaluation call for special faculties and processing routines. Both authors assumed a stronger involvement of emotional processes in this task compared to purely perceptual processes, on the one hand, and abstraction-based theoretical cognition, on the other. Put briefly, aesthetic

10 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 10 emotions were attributed the power to evaluate, in a largely intuitive way, phenomena that by definition partially defy a strictly conceptual derivation namely, the aesthetic virtues of individual objects or performances in all their richness and individuality. Mathematical solutions for difficult problems can serve to highlight the difference between theoretical and aesthetic judgments. In the end, a mathematical solution must be correct and valid, regardless of how many steps were needed to arrive at it and how complex it is. However, some solutions to cognitive problems are not only correct, but also appreciated for their elegance, and hence for a genuine aesthetic virtue. Typically, such solutions have an appearance of a surprising lightness, ease, and parsimoniousness considering the cognitive challenge to be solved (Chatterjee, 2013; Montano, 2014; Silver & Metzger, 1989). Newton s F = ma, Einstein s e = mc 2, and Heisenberg s E = hf are classical examples of elegance in cognitive achievements. Even for individuals who do not fully understand the meaning of these equations, the elegance of the concrete phenomenal form of the equation and possibly of the daring lines of thought that led to them is likely to contribute to the emotional coloring which involves astonishment and admiration in the appreciation of such outstanding cognitive achievements. This example also serves to highlight that virtually everything and by no means only artworks can be viewed with a focus on its aesthetic virtues. Kant (1790/2001, pp ) was very meticulous about separating aesthetically judgmental feelings from nonaesthetic interests, yet this did not prevent him from considering human faces and bodies, flowers, landscapes, and animals as elicitors of aesthetic feelings, no less so than poems, music, paintings, architecture, cognitive achievements, and so forth (for a systematic account of these examples, see Menninghaus, 1999, pp ; for studies on everyday aesthetics see for example Yeh, Hsu, &

11 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 11 Li, 2018; Yeh, Lin, Hsu, Kuo, & Chan, 2015). We see no reason to be less inclusive (see Figure 1). We likewise do not adopt another limitation, namely, that aesthetically evaluative feelings require a top-down activation of an aesthetic stance or attitude (Juslin, 2013). We can well be inadvertently struck by a beautiful face or a beautiful building we come across or by an unexpected view opening at the turn of a trail, without any apparent necessity to consciously activate an aesthetic stance (Höfel & Jacobsen, 2007). Moreover, the neural circuitry for aesthetic evaluation has been shown to be essentially always and automatically on, and hence appears not to be in need of a special task- or focus-driven activation (Bohrn, Altmann, Lubrich, Menninghaus, & Jacobs, 2013; Chatterjee, Thomas, Smith, & Aguirre, 2009). On a terminological note, the concept of an aesthetic judgment of taste retained substantial class-based implications throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, with good taste converging with the taste of the higher social classes. To avoid such implications, we instead use the terms aesthetic evaluation (Berlyne, 1971) and aesthetic appreciation (Berlyne, 1974; Fingerhut & Prinz, 2018; Scherer, 2012), without making a strict distinction between these terms (for a slightly different use of the term appreciation, see Oliver & Bartsch, 2010). The Structure of This Article The first main section of our article, Distinguishing the Concept of Aesthetic Emotions from Related Concepts, sets aesthetic emotions categorically apart from several concepts with which they have been frequently identified: art-represented and art-elicited emotions, formversus content-focused emotions, art as art emotions, and fiction-related, quasi-, and makebelieve emotions. In the second section, Two Classes of Aesthetic Emotion Terms, we propose a linguistic taxonomy that helps to disentangle the fuzziness of the term aesthetic emotion.

12 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 12 In the third section, Being Moved as an Exemplary Aesthetic Emotion, we show how empirical analyses can provide evidence that an emotional response is directly predictive of overall liking and/or the attribution of specific aesthetic virtues to the objects or events under consideration. We singled out emotional episodes of being moved as an exemplary test case for three reasons. First, being moved has a particularly long-standing tradition as an aesthetic emotion, dating back to Latin rhetoric and poetics. Second, the concept has been lexicalized with a largely convergent meaning across many Western, Slavic, and Asian languages. And third, several studies on being moved have already specifically focused on the role of feelings of being moved in aesthetic appreciation contexts. Our choice does not imply that we consider being moved the preeminent aesthetic emotion. The fourth and most extensive section, Prototypical Properties of Aesthetic Emotions, analyzes general properties of aesthetic emotions with regard to the following components and dimensions of emotions: cognitive appraisals, subjective feelings, and peripheral physiology as well as neural substrates, expression components, and motivational tendencies. Distinguishing the Concept of Aesthetic Emotions from Related Concepts Art-Represented, Art-Elicited, and Aesthetic Emotions Many recent uses of the term aesthetic emotions equate these with art-elicited emotions (Armstrong & Detweiler-Bedell, 2008; Konečni, 2005; Perlovsky, 2014; Scherer, 2004b; Scherer & Coutinho, 2013; Silvia, 2005a, 2010; Silvia & Brown, 2007; Silvia, Fayn, Nusbaum, & Beaty, 2015; but also see Juslin, 2013 and Marković, 2010). Some studies consider all music-elicited emotions to be simultaneously musical aesthetic emotions (Trost, Ethofer, Zentner, & Vuilleumier, 2012; Zentner, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2008; but see Payne, 1961, 1973). However, in the absence of any specific evidence that a given music-elicited emotion actually influences

13 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 13 aesthetic evaluation, this conceptual equation is not sufficiently justified. Following Kant and in agreement with Juslin (2013; see also Kivy, 1991; Payne, 1980; J. Robinson, 2009), we systematically distinguish between art-represented emotions, art-elicited emotions, and aesthetic emotions proper. Emotions are often represented, displayed, portrayed, or alluded to in works of art, be this through protagonists expressions of emotion (Dijkstra, Zwaan, Graesser, & Magliano, 1995), musical cues for example, of sadness or happiness (Juslin & Laukka, 2003), or semantic allusions, symbolic hints, and other subtle cues of mood and emotional atmosphere (cf. Bartsch, 2008; Bartsch & Viehoff, 2003; Fitch, von Graevenitz, & Nicolas, 2009; G. M. Smith, 1999). All such art-represented emotions and emotion cues can be (cognitively) perceived or decoded without the emotions necessarily being shared and felt by the art recipients. For instance, we can feel moral indignation as a protagonist displays profound satisfaction with a cruel act of murder; inversely, we can be satisfied if a vicious murder plot finally fails and the criminal is deeply disappointed (cf. Sherman & Morrissey, 2017). To be sure, emotions represented or displayed in artworks can also elicit conforming emotions in the audience research on the role of empathy and theory of mind in the processing of artworks has provided evidence for this (e.g., Eerola, Vuoskoski, & Kautiainen, 2016). However, such a convergence of art-represented emotions and emotions actually felt by the art recipient is far from being a necessary outcome (cf. Gabrielsson, ; Pelowski et al., 2017). In the context of art reception, aesthetic emotions are a subgroup of the emotions that artworks actually elicit in recipients. Again, it is distinctive of this subgroup of emotional responses that they are appreciative of specific aesthetic virtues, such as the power of an artwork to move, fascinate, and surprise us, and predictive of overall liking. By no means do all art-

14 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 14 elicited emotions meet these criteria. For instance, in the case of a thriller, feelings of moral contempt regarding the murderer are not likely to predict how well made and enjoyable we find the thriller as a whole. Given the pivotal importance of distinguishing art-elicited and aesthetic emotions, our theoretical review does not discuss in any detail studies on art-elicited emotions that either do not specifically address aesthetic emotions or simply treat the terms art-elicited emotions and aesthetic emotions interchangeably. Form- Versus Content-Focused Emotions Several authors have identified the emotions that specifically appraise the artistic virtues of artworks as emotions that focus on the form of artworks rather than on their content (Frijda, 1989; Plantinga, 2009; Tan, 1996, 2000; Visch, Tan, & Molenaar, 2010). We do not fully adopt this distinction for two reasons. First, the form content distinction is commonly limited to the representational arts, and specifically to narrative art forms, including film. However, some art forms are not representational in any narrower sense, let alone narrative (for example, abstract painting and music that neither involves words nor follows a representational program ). Second, we contend that it is problematic, even with regard to the representational arts, to categorically set apart emotional responses to content on the one hand and to form on the other. After all, artworks are widely held to be integrative wholes featuring high levels of interaction between form and content rather than consisting of neatly separable layers of form and content that can be orthogonally rotated (for empirical evidence in favor of this assumption, see Menninghaus, Wagner, Wassiliwizky, Jacobsen, & Knoop, 2017).

15 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 15 Art as Art Emotions Fingerhut and Prinz s (2018) definition of aesthetic emotions as evaluating art as art is reminiscent of Clive Bell s definition (1947) quoted above. Like the concept of form - focused emotions, it places the prime focus on the appreciation of aesthetic goodness, yet it avoids a clear-cut dissociation of form and content. The authors propose that wonder is the preeminent aesthetic emotion in that it is only elicited by artworks that combine highly extraordinary sensory, cognitive, and spiritual features and effects. The emotional nature of artelicited wonder is circumscribed as filling us with confusion and perplexity, similar to awe, disturbing, harrowing, and awakening existential thoughts about the fragility of life as well as a sense of our smallness, and in the end eliciting spiritual feelings of reverence. Even though not fully convergent, this analysis shows substantial overlap with Kant s analysis of the feeling of the sublime (Kant, 1790/2001, pp ). We do not challenge the notion that some great artworks specifically elicit feelings of wonder and awe, along with some deep and potentially life-changing thoughts (see also Konečni, 2005; Marković, 2012; Pelowski, 2015; Perlovsky, 2014; Prinz, 2011). However, empirical evidence suggests that only a small fraction of actual responses to artworks and media products are of such a profound nature (Gabrielsson, 2010; Juslin, 2013; Juslin, Liljeström, Laukka, Västfjäll, & Lundqvist, 2011). Consequently, Fingerhut and Prinz s (2018) proposal is decidedly selective and limited in scope. It cannot and does not claim to account for the great majority of aesthetic emotions in response to artworks and media products, and it programmatically disregards all aesthetic emotions beyond the domain of the arts.

16 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 16 Fiction-Related, Quasi-, and Make-Believe Emotions Finally, in order to avoid potential confounds, we also distinguish aesthetic emotions from the theoretical concept of fiction-related emotions. Since the beginning of the 20th century, researchers in the field of psychological aesthetics (cf. Bawden, 1908; Clay, 1908; Kirschmann, 1900; Külpe, 1903; Ritoók, 1910; Stratton, 1902) and also philosophers (Geiger, 1914, 1922; Lange, 1901; Meinong, 1917; Witasek, 1901, 1904) have discussed potentially distinctive characteristics of emotional responses to fictional artworks using terms such as as-if, quasi, inauthentic, and phantasy emotions. Walton s concept of make-believe emotions (1990) was later added to these classifications (cf. Mulligan, 2009; Solomon, 2003). All these terms focus exclusively on the special ontology of emotions elicited by fictional artworks. Some authors explicitly acknowledged that this focus needs to be clearly distinguished from a focus on aesthetic evaluation proper and the concomitant feelings (Külpe, 1921; Witasek, 1904). After all, the aesthetic virtues of a beautiful work of fiction are no less real (or at least perceived as real) than those of a beautiful car or a beautiful human face. Thus, in our understanding, aesthetic emotions proper are not quasi- or make-believe emotions, even if other art-elicited emotions might be. We therefore disregard this distinction in our theorizing about aesthetic emotions (for a similar stance, see Juslin, 2013). Two Classes of Aesthetic Emotion Terms Natural languages do not provide a special and nuanced vocabulary for aesthetic emotions (but see the Indian concept of rasa and the Chinese concept of pin wei; cf. Sundararajan, 2010; Thampi, 1965). As a result, most aesthetic emotion terms cannot but draw on ordinary emotion terms and hence are linguistically no different from the latter. This may have contributed to the conceptual confusion regarding aesthetic emotions. In order to reduce or

17 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 17 fully avoid this confusion, we propose a taxonomy of two complementary classes of aesthetic emotion terms and elucidate the cognitive challenges that come with each class: linguistic terms used for designating aesthetic emotions either superimpose an aesthetically evaluative meaning on ordinary emotion terms (Class 1) or an emotional meaning on prototypical aesthetic virtue terms (Class 2). The first class of aesthetic emotion terms directly draws on emotion terms that are also, and mostly primarily, used with an ordinary emotion meaning, such as joy, amusement, nostalgia, surprise, being moved, being shattered, fascination, boredom, disgust, and anger. Importantly, with regard to artworks, the use of these emotion terms is not just descriptive of emotional contents and effects but is also (implicitly) meant to be evaluative of the artwork qua artwork (cf. Hanich, Wagner, Shah, Jacobsen, & Menninghaus, 2014; Oliver & Bartsch, 2010; Wassiliwizky, Wagner, Jacobsen, & Menninghaus, 2015). That is, we enjoy and like a work of art because it moves, fascinates, elevates, shocks, or surprises us, and we dislike an artwork because it bores us or makes us angry (for a critical epistemological discussion of this double use of emotion terms in aesthetic contexts, see Prinz, 2004). In the second class, the key semantic constituent is not an emotion term, but a term that primarily designates an object s aesthetic virtue, with beauty being the most significant example. By itself, the attribution of beauty to any given object does not amount to simultaneously designating an emotional response that may come with this attribution. Therefore, treating beauty itself as an emotion (cf. Armstrong & Detweiler-Bedell, 2008; Tan, 2000) seems to be odd from a linguistic point of view (see also Fingerhut & Prinz, 2018). Kant (1790/2001) solved this terminological issue by adding the expression the feeling of, and hence by speaking of the feeling of beauty and the feeling of the sublime. Essentially, many classical aesthetic virtue terms that are

18 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 18 not emotion terms such as the attribution of vividness to special kinds of artistic representation (cf. Belfi, Vessel, & Starr, 2017; Menninghaus, 2009) can in this way be reformulated as emotional experiences (feelings of vividness, etc.). The same applies to a great variety of other concepts that capture dimensions of aesthetic processing. For instance, groove at least in the meaning which focuses on the subjective feeling of groove rather than on an objective rhythmical property only could well be considered as a distinct aesthetic feeling (e.g., Janata, Tomic, & Haberman, 2012; Stupacher, Hove, & Janata, 2016; Witek, Clarke, Wallentin, Kringelbach, & Vuust, 2014). To be sure, emotion terms of this latter type are clearly non-prototypical as emotion terms. At the same time, Kant s detailed analyses of the feelings of the beautiful and of the sublime leave no doubt that they are meant to designate full-blown discrete emotions/feelings distinguished by characteristic appraisal structures and affective profiles. Put very briefly, feelings of beauty arise when we intuitively experience a good fit, or a free harmonious interplay, between our sensory and cognitive dispositions and the objects perceived to be beautiful (Kant, 1790/2001, pp , ). In contrast, feelings of the sublime (Kant, 1790/2001, pp ) involve some mismatch between our relative smallness and the grandeur and potentially devastating might of both nature and social conflicts. At the same time, feelings of the sublime precisely activate our determination to withstand these seemingly incommensurate challenges rather than feel dwarfed by them. As a result, the liking (Wohlgefallen) associated with feelings of the sublime integrates negative feelings of facing almost overwhelming challenges with the pleasure of nevertheless mentally living up to them (Kant, 1790/2001, pp ; Menninghaus, 1991; for similar analyses of feelings of the sublime and awe, see Eskine, Kacinik, & Prinz, 2012; Gordon et al., 2016; Keltner & Haidt,

19 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS ; Konečni, 2005). Notably, Kant s analyses of feelings of the sublime and the beautiful, respectively, can be readily projected onto Berlyne s distinction of two mechanisms of positive hedonic value in aesthetic appreciation: one entails an overcoming and integration of markedly unpleasant processing ingredients, whereas the other does not (Berlyne, 1971, pp ). The two classes of aesthetic emotion terms strongly differ in how linguistically salient they make their bearing on subjectively evaluated aesthetic virtues. In the second class (feelings of beauty, etc.), it is crystal clear that the feelings are about aesthetic virtues. In the first class, however, this is far less obvious and in fact not necessarily the case. Rather, it is only in special contexts that self-reported feelings of being emotionally moved, for example, can simultaneously be both meant and understood as implying a positive aesthetic appreciation of the eliciting stimulus (for further treatment of this point, see the section Being Moved as an Exemplary Aesthetic Emotion ). In this sense, our linguistic taxonomy also has theoretical importance for understanding the use and functioning of aesthetic emotion terms. In expressions such as the feeling of beauty, the term beauty is an objective genitive. By itself, it designates an aesthetic virtue of the object of the feeling; it is only in combination with the feeling of that it becomes a genuine emotion term. In contrast, in the expression the emotion/feeling of surprise, the term surprise is a subjective genitive: it is by itself the specific emotion that is here subsumed under the general category emotion. Importantly, in cases of objective genitives, the English language prefers the word feeling over emotion. Therefore, expressions such as feeling of beauty and feeling of the sublime sound far more idiomatic than emotion of beauty and emotion of the sublime. Accordingly, translations of Kant s treatises on the Gefühle of beauty and the sublime consistently use the term feeling rather than emotion (see also Starr, 2013).

20 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 20 Regarding these subtle differences in language use, a terminological convention established in the more recent psychology of emotions may give rise to potential confusion. In this special scientific context, only the relatively recent term emotion is used as a broad concept that encompasses multiple components of emotion (physiology, expression, action tendency, etc.), whereas the older term feeling has been narrowed down to exclusively designating the subjective feeling component of an emotion (Scherer, 2004a, 2005). Setting apart two nearsynonyms in the service of a theory-guided distinction is a smart move. Nevertheless, in everyday language use, the words emotion and feeling are far less categorically set apart along these lines, and again, linguistic expressions such as emotions of the sublime sound far less natural than feelings of the sublime. We honor this prevalent common language use throughout this article. At the same time, we retain the distinction between the broader terms emotion and feeling, on the one hand, and the more narrowly defined subjective feeling component, on the other. Thus, whenever we use the term subjective feeling (mostly in conjunction with terms such as component or dimension), we refer to the subjective feeling component only. In contrast, when we use the term feeling without such specification, it encompasses all components of an emotion and is in this sense synonymous with the term emotion. Being Moved as an Exemplary Aesthetic Emotion Newly released films or novels are frequently advertised as being deeply moving. Much like in earlier uses of this term in Latin poetics (Cicero, 1962; Quintilian, 1920), 18thcentury aesthetics (Schiller, 1792), and beyond, this attribute clearly implies that the respective films or novels stand out as being well made, powerful, and emotionally engaging artistic achievements (see also Pelowski et al., 2017). At the same time, many real-life episodes can

21 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 21 likewise be experienced as deeply moving, including weddings, funerals, acts of separation and reconciliation, and many others (Cova & Deonna, 2014; Kuehnast, Wagner, Wassiliwizky, Jacobsen, & Menninghaus, 2014). Importantly, this dual capacity is by no means exceptional. Rather, in the case of the aesthetic emotion terms that are linguistically based on ordinary emotion terms (i.e., being moved, surprise amazement, awe, etc.), the aesthetically evaluative dimension mostly comes not as an alternative to, or instead of, the nonaesthetic meaning of that emotion term, but on top of it. This makes it all the more urgent to distinguish the aesthetic and nonaesthetic meanings of labeling something as deeply moving. To begin, it is a key feature of states of being moved that they activate feelings of social connectedness and prosocial values (Fiske, Seibt, & Schubert, 2017; Kuehnast et al., 2014; Menninghaus, Wagner, et al., 2015; Seibt, Schubert, Zickfeld, & Fiske, 2017). Accordingly, experimental studies have shown that experiencing states of being moved can enhance prosocial behavior (Fukui & Toyoshima, 2014; Stel, van Baaren, & Vonk, 2008). Something similar appears to hold for literature-induced empathy (Kidd & Castano, 2013; Mumper & Gerrig, 2017, but see Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Panero et al., 2016; Samur, Tops, & Koole, 2018), which is often an integral component of states of being moved. Moreover, ample evidence suggests that music, films, and poems can elicit feelings of being moved along with feelings such as joy, peacefulness, nostalgia, or sadness (Eerola, Vuoskoski, Peltola, Putkinen, & Schäfer, 2017; Menninghaus, Wagner, et al., 2017a; Panksepp, 1995; Taruffi & Koelsch, 2014; Zentner et al., 2008). Are all these feelings automatically aesthetic feelings by virtue of being experienced in contexts of art and media reception, as occasionally suggested (Nusbaum & Silvia, 2014; Nusbaum et al., 2014)?

22 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 22 Since feelings of being moved are often experienced independently of aesthetic evaluation, Fingerhut and Prinz (2018, pp ) have pointed out that it is therefore unclear in which cases and to what extent feelings of being moved are actually specifically about the goodness of an artwork as an aesthetic achievement. We agree that this is the crucial question to be asked when it comes to distinguishing aesthetic from nonaesthetic emotions (see also Xenakis, Arnellos, & Darzentas, 2012). Like all aesthetic emotions that are linguistically derived from ordinary emotion terms (further examples being suspense, surprise, interest, boredom), being moved can be an everyday emotion, an art-elicited emotion in the broader sense, and, to the extent that it directly predicts aesthetic appreciation, an aesthetic emotion in the narrower sense. In all of these cases, the aesthetically evaluative dimension comes not as an alternative to, or instead of, the nonaesthetic meaning of that emotion term, but on top of it. Again, as languages quite generally do not offer separate lexical items for each meaning they can communicate, they cannot but rely on context-specific activations of different meanings of the same lexical items. Importantly, explicit efforts aimed at distinguishing these multiple meanings of the same lexical emotion items have provided strong empirical evidence that, in many cases, labeling a speech or an artwork as moving does indeed entail a genuine aesthetically evaluative dimension and that this aesthetic emotion dimension allows for a straightforward empirical confirmation. Thus, in a study by Hanich and colleagues (2014), participants who had given high ratings for being moved by deeply sad film clips were expressly asked whether these ratings implied a positive or a negative appreciation of the clips as artworks. The response was unambiguous: the emotional response of being moved was expressly identified as implying appreciation of the clips as well-made films and hence as aesthetic achievements.

23 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 23 Another experimental study (Menninghaus, Wagner, Wassiliwizky, et al., 2017) provided even stronger evidence for this assumption. While keeping the content constant, 20 sadly and 20 joyfully moving poems were presented to participants in their original and modified versions. The modifications specifically targeted metrical regularity and rhyme, and hence stylistic features of poetic diction. Average ratings for being moved were significantly affected by these formal modifications of diction. Moreover, across both versions of the poems, ratings for being moved were strongly and directly predictive of ratings of overall liking as well as of differential degrees of perceived beauty and melodiousness. Hence, in these contexts, feelings of being moved clearly have a stake in genuine aesthetic appreciation, on top of their involvement in the processing of the poems contents. On a similar vein, a study on the physiology and neural correlates of reading emotionally moving poems revealed that peak moments of states of being moved as marked by chills and goosebumps are sensitive to an important compositional feature: they typically occurred towards the ends of lines and stanzas, with the intensity increasing the more the poem approached its closure in the final line (Wassiliwizky, Koelsch, Wagner, Jacobsen, & Menninghaus, 2017). Hence, feelings of being moved appear also to be sensitive to the musicanalogous tension resolution structure (Huron, 2006; Meyer, 1961) of poems: with each additional line, the predictions of readers regarding the poem s formal patterning and its overall trajectory, including its content, become increasingly strong, and so do the rewards of the resolution perceived both at intermediate closing points of the composition (cadences of lines and stanzas) and at the poem s final conclusion. Path analyses performed on the results of the above-reported studies provided further insight into the distinction between aesthetic and nonaesthetic emotions. They revealed that

24 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 24 sadness ratings for film clips made no direct contribution to liking ratings once the common variance with ratings of being moved was accounted for, but only via the mediation of feelings of being moved (Hanich et al., 2014; Wassiliwizky et al., 2015). This pattern of results has been replicated for sad-sounding music (Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2017). Moreover, Taruffi and Koelsch (Taruffi & Koelsch, 2014) have shown that sad-sounding music elicits predominantly positive feelings because it is associated with feelings of nostalgia and tenderness in Western listeners and feelings of peacefulness and tenderness in Eastern (Asian) listeners. We interpret these findings as implying that, in such contexts, feelings of sadness are not aesthetic emotions per se simply because they are elicited by an artwork, but, more specifically, only because and to the extent that these negative feelings contribute to other emotional responses that are either positive or mixed in affective valence (Juslin, 2013). Only the latter emotions are, in turn, directly predictive of both beauty ratings and overall liking (cf. Menninghaus, Wagner, et al., 2017a; Wald-Fuhrmann, 2010). However, the indirect contributions made by sadness are by no means negligible (cf. the section The Role of Negative and Mixed Emotions ). It may therefore be worth investigating to what extent the understanding of aesthetic emotions could profit from a threefold distinction between emotions that are directly predictive of aesthetic appreciation (as measured by liking ratings and/or the attribution of specific aesthetic virtues to the objects or events under consideration), emotions that contribute to such appreciation via a detour through other emotions, and emotions that do not at all contribute to genuine aesthetic appreciation. Notably, for joyfully moving films, path analysis revealed that joy does make a direct contribution to measures of self-reported liking; in addition, joy like sadness also contributes to liking via mediation through feelings of being moved (Wassiliwizky et al., 2015). The finding

25 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 25 lends empirical support to the assumption that more than one aesthetic emotion can be elicited by the same stimulus. It also raises an interesting question for future research: namely, whether or not negative emotions, contrary to positive ones, routinely only make indirect contributions to perceived liking and enjoyment. Evidence in favor of this distinction between positive and negative emotions would further strengthen the positivity bias of aesthetic emotions (see the section Pleasure, reward, and positivity bias ). However, this outcome appears to be not readily predictable considering the complex relations of positive and negative emotional response dimensions discussed in the section Intrinsic Pleasantness and the Special Role of Negative and Mixed Emotions. To be sure, mediation analyses of the type referred to above do not prove a causal relation between the respective feelings and aesthetic liking. Still, they do impose higher standards on the statistical correlations by controlling them for the potential influence of other co-occurrent response dimensions. We therefore consider path analyses an important and helpful tool in research on aesthetic emotions. Essentially, great progress could be made in identifying aesthetic emotions if existing and published datasets that include multiple emotion ratings (such as suspense, fascination, or horror ratings) along with liking and aesthetic virtue ratings were reanalyzed for the direct, indirect, or absent contributions the respective emotions make to the ratings for liking and aesthetic virtues. Performing such analyses is likewise a means to test our underlying conceptual assumptions about aesthetic emotions being a proxy for aesthetically evaluative emotions. Summing up, research on being moved strongly supports the notion that experiencing specific emotions can in some contexts be directly predictive of aesthetic appreciation, concomitant liking and the attribution of a special range of aesthetic virtues. This predictive

26 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 26 power of specific discrete emotions cannot be derived from Berlyne s model of aesthetic evaluation (1971) but constitutes an explanatory factor of its own. Prototypical Properties of Aesthetic Emotions In this section, we analyze prototypical properties of aesthetic emotions with regard to the following components and dimensions of emotions: cognitive appraisals, subjective feeling qualities, peripheral physiology and neural substrates, expression components, and motivational tendencies. Cognitive Appraisals Throughout various psychological theories, prototypical emotions are conceived as processes comprising a broad variety of cognitive appraisals (novelty, intrinsic pleasantness, relevance, attributions of agency, coping potential, conduciveness to our goals/needs, conformity to social standards and self-ideals, and so forth; see Clore, Ortony, & Foss, 1987; Frijda, 1986; Lazarus, 1991; Reisenzein, 2001; Russell, 2003; Russell & Feldman Barrett, 1999; Scherer, 2005; C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). In this section, we focus only on those appraisals that we propose to have particular importance across all aesthetic emotions and, by implication, for aesthetic evaluation. By definition, this effort requires substantial abstraction from the many features that are likely not to be shared across the broad spectrum of aesthetic emotions. Intrinsic pleasantness and the special role of negative and mixed emotions. From 19 th century psychophysics (Fechner, 1860; Wundt, 1896) to Berlyne (1971, p. 81) and beyond, the experiential dimension of pleasantness vs. unpleasantness has time and again become a key topic in conceptualizations of pleasure and hedonic reward, and in the cases referred to above partly or even wholly with a special focus on aesthetic evaluation. Typically, however, specific discrete aesthetic emotions did not play a role in this context. Scherer has

27 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 27 adopted the (un)pleasantness dimension for an appraisal account specifically of aesthetic emotions. In Scherer s view, the appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness is the cognitive appraisal for perceived aesthetic appeal and concomitant aesthetic emotions (Scherer, 2005; Scherer & Zentner, 2001). In general, appraisals of intrinsic pleasantness are an individual s evaluation of a stimulus in itself and independently of the individual s current needs and goals. In the case of aesthetic emotions, intrinsic pleasantness appraisals are specifically predictive of the appreciation of the intrinsic qualities of the beauty of nature, or the qualities of a work of art or an artistic performance (Scherer, 2005, p. 706). Many findings and hypotheses in empirical aesthetics can be interpreted as supporting the importance of subjectively perceived pleasantness for aesthetic evaluation. Thus, it has been shown that, in aesthetic evaluation, perceived intrinsic pleasantness and concomitant liking are often driven by optimal arousal levels (Berlyne, 1971, 1974), optimal innovation levels (Giora et al., 2004; Hekkert, Snelders, & van Wieringen, 2003; Jacobsen, 2010; Loewy, 2002, p. 278), familiarity and mere exposure effects (Bornstein, 1989; Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998; Zajonc, 1968), processing fluency (Reber, 2016; Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004; Silvia, 2007; Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001; Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, & Reber, 2003), and perceptual processes such as contrast extraction, figure ground separation, grouping, closure, and segmentation (Birkhoff, 1933; Eysenck, 1942; Köhler, 1929; Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999). None of these findings and hypotheses refer to extrinsic goals or needs of observers; rather, they are based on intrinsic stimulus qualities as well as on genetic and learned processing dispositions on the part of observers, which are also included in Scherer s definition of the intrinsic pleasantness appraisal (Scherer, 2005; Scherer & Zentner, 2001). Comparing aesthetic emotions with moral emotions makes the distinctive importance of the appraisal of intrinsic

28 AESTHETIC EMOTIONS 28 pleasantness all the more obvious: moral emotions are not about sensory and cognitive pleasantness, but are rather, and even at the expense of some unpleasantness, about compatibility with socially accepted moral norms and (self-)ideals. Although the appraisal of intrinsic pleasantness is of key importance, our understanding of aesthetic emotions differs from Scherer s in that we do not define aesthetic emotions by exclusive reference to this appraisal. Rather, we argue that all appraisals discussed in the present subsection make substantial and distinctive contributions to determining specific aesthetically evaluative emotions. Moreover, the emphasis on intrinsic pleasantness cannot by itself account for the important role of mixed and negative emotions which typically are not experienced as (thoroughly) pleasant in a broader range of aesthetic emotions. Kant already emphasized that the pleasure associated with aesthetic emotions is not limited to mere pleasantness and purely positive valence (1790/2001, pp ), but in many cases is compatible with a dual process of being attracted and repelled (1790/2001, p. 129). For other authors, as well, intellectual and emotional pleasures (including those of art reception) routinely encompass negative emotions like sadness [...] and positive emotions that entail complex appraisal (Dubé & Le Bel, 2003, p. 291; see also Berenbaum, 2002; Frijda & Sundararajan, 2007; Kubovy, 1999). In line with this understanding, the pleasure taken in the tension resolution trajectories of music (Huron, 2006; Meyer, 1961; Salimpoor et al., 2013) often involves and integrates (temporarily) disappointed expectations. The temporal trajectories (for this concept, see Fitch et al., 2009) of narratives in different media as well as poems typically also include many unhappy and unpleasant events, including tragic endings. As negative emotions are particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and privileged access to and retrieval from memory (Cacioppo & Gardner, 1999;